| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: scholastic Oscar as flippancies which he must indulge, since the pay was
handsome. That these idlers should jump in with doubts and questions
not contained in his sacred notes raised in him feelings betrayed just
once in that remark about "orriginal rresearch."
"Nine--ten--eleven--twelve," went the little timepiece; and Oscar rose.
"Gentlemen," he said, closing the sacred notes, "we have finished the
causal law."
"That's the whole business except the ego racket, isn't it?" said Billy.
"The duality, or multiplicity of the ego remains," Oscar replied.
"Oh, I know its name. It ought to be a soft snap after what we've had."
"Unless it's full of dates and names you've got to know," said Bertie.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: and an apron with a bib like those worn by hospital nurses.
Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five, she
looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her age;
erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure working
automatically.
CHAPTER II
Like every other woman, she had had an affair of the heart. Her
father, who was a mason, was killed by falling from a scaffolding.
Then her mother died and her sisters went their different ways; a
farmer took her in, and while she was quite small, let her keep cows
in the fields. She was clad in miserable rags, beaten for the
A Simple Soul |
